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Everyone was very happy and pleased that we moved through the last Christmas and New Year holidays without a bus accident, and then managed the same achievement in the Easter holidays.
We celebrated too soon. Over the last week we have seen three buses crash with people killed: Two people were killed and 22 injured when a Dubies Bus Company bus crashed in Binga area on Friday last week; 13 people were killed as a result of a Timboon bus crashing near Chivhu on Sunday and three people were killed and 22 injured when a Mandaza bus crashed near Goto business centre in Hwedza district on Tuesday morning.
While details of the final accident are still a little sketchy, the main cause of the first two accidents has been seen as excessive speed, with at the very least the speed causing the accidents to have been more serious than could have been the case.
The Binga bus crash was an accident waiting to happen says the local and activist chief, Chief Siansali, who has been dealing with bus companies using the route through his jurisdiction for some time.
He even went to Bulawayo to talk to the owners and manager of two of the companies, after noting them frequently racing each other and speeding. One company took prompt action.
The other basically did not see a problem, and its bus was the one that crashed on Friday, while the driver was apparently racing a bus belonging to a third company, which is based outside Matabeleland area.
The chief, not surprisingly, wants firmer action including the staggering of timetables so racing is impossible and companies being forced, if necessary by suspension of permits, to enforce proper driving by their staff.
The Chivhu accident, one of those major national disaster bus tragedies that were once more common, has again according to eyewitnesses been the result of speeding, this time without a race, just a driver in a hurry and he was one of those killed.
Obviously three buses crashing in five days shows that something is seriously wrong and that bus companies need to fix the problem, or have the Government fix the problem for them.
We saw Government intervention working effectively when two buses racing along the Chirundu highway caused an fatal accident involving one, with the conductor killed.
Minister of Transport and Infrastructure Development Felix Mhona had the appropriate agencies in his ministry look into the matter and they suspended the permits of the two companies with full ministerial backing. One company read the writing on the wall very quickly, organised the necessary management control and retraining programmes, and was allowed back on the road.
The other brooded about a High Court civil suit, before it too recognised that it was first more appropriate, and easier, to take the same moves and return to operations.
Meanwhile, the police moved fast, and presumably with specialist diagnosis by Transport Ministry experts plus questioning of witnesses managed to put together enough evidence to charge both drivers with culpable homicide.
The trial magistrate was able to convict the pair and jail them. The magistrate, on the evidence presented, thought the driver who did not crash was marginally more to blame and so he has the longer sentence, but they are both behind bars and banned from driving buses for life, so they have something to talk about and plan while they spend time together in jail.
In those last three crashes, the Binga driver is on the run, and hopefully the police will have him in handcuffs soon, while the Chivhu driver is dead.
Investigations are still in progress, but Minister Mhona may well have to exercise his statutory powers, or at least those of the agency that grants permits, to suspend more companies.
We also think that the police and the Prosecutor-General need to think about charging the top manager, the person with the CEO role, in every company where a driver appears to be at fault.
So far no court in Zimbabwe has been asked to consider whether the chain of blame can include the person who is supposed to ensure that drivers obey the law, but it would be interesting to see what the courts think.
The grounds would be that the company exercised inadequate supervision or even encouraged, even if informally, drivers to speed up a bit. It certainly needs some police investigation.
Minister Mhona has been talking about speed limiters on buses, to ensure they remain within the 80km/h limit.
One reasonably modern buses, those with the digital control systems it should be easy to programme in a maximum speed, or at least a siren going off if the limit is exceeded.
On older buses there are a lot of expensive and fairly inefficient analogue systems involving governors.
But useful as this is in some cases, there is the problem is that very often the maximum speed is an unsafe speed, and the bus needs to be travelling significantly slower.
A speed limit is a maximum speed, something that can be approached closely on straight roads with minimal other traffic and good weather in daylight.
As curves appear, speeds must be reduced below the legal maximum, and heavy traffic needs a lot more care. Rain, flooded road surfaces and mud need even lower speeds.
The Chivhu accident was definitely on a curve, and it is likely that the driver might well have below the limit, although obviously going far too fast since he failed to negotiate the curve and his high speed had created so much energy that the crash was seriously fatal.
Everyone needs to remember that the energy that needs to dissipate in a crash is proportional to the square of the velocity, so double the speed there is four times as much energy, triple the speed there is nine times.
This is why so many urban accidents, at least off the main highways, are not much more than providing work for panel beaters, while main highway collisions need a lot of coffins. We doubt that there is a single path to really superior bus driving in Zimbabwe, but we have now developed a batch of measures that should be applied.
The suspension of permits puts pressure on managers to effectively manage drivers; speed limiters need to be tried and at least will modify behaviour on the open highway; the police need to go after drivers who break the law, and consider going involving their managers and the agencies that set timetables need to stagger bus times so that it is impossible to race.
And something like the measures taken by Chief Siansali, someone in authority approaching bus companies whose drivers break the law, can be effective.
He did after all get one company to exercise better control. The public can also help by passing on information, and even video clips, of drivers who simply do not care. We all need to care and then make the reluctant care if they want to stay in business.
Online Reporter